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State Legislators Work on Their ‘Off’ Days

Counterintuitively, all the days this week that the state Legislature met for hearings did not count towards their 40-day session. This week is historically utilized for multiple budget hearings as the Senate and House hear from various state agencies so that they can begin to sort out the spending plan for the state. Georgia law requires the state to pass the budget, and as such the budget bills are referred to as “the only bills that they must pass” – and they attract much debate.

In addition to the budget hearings, there were multiple coalition meetings and work done in the Capitol halls, with the various hearings of other committees beginning next week now that the committee makeup and chairmanships have been finalized. With the state Legislature “out” this week, a bottleneck of bills is anticipated to be introduced. Several bills that credit unions have been engaged on are anticipated soon, including a charter enhancement bill. This bill was created with input from the state law review task force, which is made up of credit unions working with the Department of Banking and Finance to create improvements for the industry.

In addition, GCUA has been engaged with legislators this week to tee up issues for the industry, but in the meantime, the following bills have been added to the credit union legislative tracking system:

  • SB 15 by Sen. John Albers (R-Alpharetta) is focused on establishing school safety parameters. And while it’s an important issue, the back portion of the bill is on tax exemptions, and will be monitored for any tax-related changes later in the session.

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